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Flood and Water Management Bill

My hon. Friend brings me on to two points that I wanted to touch on. The first is that I think that all of us must be honest with ourselves and with the public about what can be afforded, and what cannot. The Secretary of State will no doubt remind the House when he winds up that the Government have increased spending on flood-prevention measures. I think that the total will be £1 billion by 2011, but the Association of British Insurers has suggested that expenditure should be as high has £1.5 billion. When the implementation of the Pitt proposals was costed, Pitt himself indicated that there was an inadequacy of funding. We must be realistic. Under the current circumstances, we cannot, for example, protect everything by means of hard-engineering solutions. One of the outcomes of the work to be done on risk assessment and the development of a strategy should be to fulfil the objective set out in clause 3, where it speaks of""preparing, gathering and disseminating maps, plans, surveys and other information"" for communities. Communities must be informed about the risks they face. More importantly, they must be informed about what risks can be dealt with—and, more importantly still, what risks cannot be dealt with. The subject of resilience has already made an appearance in this debate, and quite rightly so. I do not think that we spend enough time on that. One of the most impressive groups of witnesses to come before the Committee came from the National Floods Forum. The forum operates something like a British standard that delineates what equipment works and what does not, but it also has a great deal of experience in giving people in communities guidance on how to make things resilient. The tragedies of Cumbria and Boscastle have made me wonder whether people in those communities were aware that there were risks that could not be engineered away. If they were so aware, could they, with adequate notice and advice, have prepared themselves better to protect their existing properties? All that is notwithstanding the observations that have been made about building new properties above flood-risk areas. I very much agree with the observations that many hon. Members have made already about planning and building in flood plain areas. We need to be much harder with ourselves and work to stop increasing flood risk. My hon. Friend the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire made a very good point about our trip to Lyons. The city lies at the confluence of two of France's major rivers, and it is very interesting to see how the authorities there have integrated their flood defences both regionally and locally. They have built massive sustainable urban drainage schemes, and the integration of those SUDS with the protection of the built environment is very impressive. It provides some very important lessons for how we might do the same here. However, when we look at how the Bill is drafted, there is a subtlety about clause 3 and the way that it integrates with clause 7. We as legislators must read the definition of "risk" with care, and I hope that the Committee that succeeds the one that I chair will examine carefully how all those tasked with developing the new strategies deal with that definition. We must make rigorously certain that "risk" incorporates all the things that have been mentioned in the debate so far, and that a response to those risk elements is part of the Environment Agency's strategy. If we do that then, with the right degree of scrutiny and pressure from parliamentarians, we can use the subtlety of the drafting to ensure that we can at least have the right shopping list, so to speak, of the things that must be responded to. Thereafter, we can examine critically way whether we have the resources and the wherewithal to deal with any problems that might arise. One thing that worries me is whether we have, in sum total, the right degree of expertise, especially with regard to engineers skilled in the management of water. The Environment Agency has taken steps to address that issue, but it strikes me that those particular talents will be in very great demand, especially among the local authorities at county level that will be in charge of implementing some of these strategic matters. Water does not recognise political boundaries. I hope the Committee will examine carefully whether, in developing strategies on political boundaries, we have the mechanisms for catchment areas to knit things together. One of the problems arising from the truncated Bill is that the flood risk management plans that are part of the EU floods directive implementation process are dealt with by statutory instrument outwith the scope of the Bill. I understand why, for legislative reasons, the Government are doing that, but the danger is that the legislation implementing the European directive remains outside the integrating function of the Bill. I seek reassurance from the Secretary of State in his winding-up speech that the gluing together of the parts will take place. One of the things missing from the Bill is the requirement for the Environment Agency to prepare river maps showing who is responsible for what. That seems to me to be part of the requirements of the EU floods directive. We can immediately see the complexity and the problem of integrating all the parts so that the strategy developed by the Environment Agency will work in reality. I hope the Secretary of State will address the issue in his winding-up speech or when the Bill goes into Committee. We have talked a great deal this evening about SUDS. Our Committee looked, for example, at highway drainage. When the 2007 events occurred, our highways became the drainage channels to rivers in such a way that the rivers could not accommodate the water running off so quickly. "Slow water" is a phrase that has been used in the debate this evening. Anything that slows things down is a good idea. The integration of sustainable urban drainage solutions for highways is jolly good but, as the Government said:""We recognise that there is currently no incentive for highway authorities to install sustainable drainage systems because the cost of highway drainage is met by water customers."" That is the kind of risk factor which, if it is teased out at the planning stage of the development of the risk strategy, we might be able to mitigate, but it requires a burden shift in terms of funding. We see the same questions recurring about resources and who has the money to deal with these complicated issues. In Committee some of the real- world challenges posed by flooding should be tested out. In the Bill, the implications of climate change are a feature to be examined in the context of the development of the strategy. One of the things that increasingly worries me, and which the sad events in Cumbria underscore, is that a one in 1,000-year event can occur. I was asked about this in the context of our existing flood defence systems. In a city such as London, the highway drainage system is scoped to deal with a one in 30-year event. What would happen in London if a one in 1,000-year event occurred? We would have catastrophic flooding, but can we afford to scope up our drainage system by a factor of 30 to cope with that? The answer is probably no. That is why we must be honest when we look at what we can and cannot do, and prepare accordingly. The Bill is silent on the critical infrastructure but—coming back to the question of risks and picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood)—that can be incorporated in the risks and therefore encompassed by the strategy of the Environment Agency. If the Bill deals with the risks of reservoirs, the question of the integrity of bridges needs to be re-examined. Cumbria taught us a rude and painful lesson. Structures which we thought were impervious to the effects of flooding certainly were not. A new dimension of community disruption occurred which none of the previous flooding events in this country had illustrated. Although the Bill is silent on that, the powers and the responsibilities, particularly of county highway authorities, should be re-examined to make sure that there is a duty upon them to re-examine bridge structures regularly to determine whether they are capable of withstanding the type of event that occurred in Cumbria. One of the aspects that we should reflect on, which emerged from the evidence that we received, is that in the areas that we represent, all of us have a much more articulate constituency of members of the public who are now infinitely better informed about every aspect of flooding. They know about water courses, they have local knowledge, and they are vociferous in arguing their corner. They are a very important part of the process that the Bill deals with. If we as politicians do not recognise the human dimension—the public dimension—all our discussions about flooding, water charging and so on will be the poorer. We must acknowledge the role of the informed member of the public and make certain that they are properly involved in the consultation processes for which the Bill provides as part of the strategy that the Environment Agency is to introduce. I conclude by saying that I, too, am delighted that the Bill deals with the surface area water charging regime. However, I have one concern. The Bill rightly identifies one group of people who can benefit from positive discrimination. I support that, but on the issue of the affordability of water, individual citizens may look slightly jealously at that part of the Bill and say, "What about us?" In supporting the intent of the Bill, I hope that whoever forms the next Government will return to the question early in the next Parliament and complete the task that the Bill begins.